All this was taking place within two hundred yards of Hassan Pasha, and he saw nothing of it.
"Glory be to Allah," he cried, raising his hands to heaven; "victory is ours! The Christian is flying and is casting down his banners in every direction. The best of his warriors are wallowing in the dust. The rest are flying without weapons and with pale——"
Those about him listened, horror-stricken, to his words. The Christian host was at that moment cutting down the Janissaries, the flower of the Turkish camp!
"Thou ravest, my master!" cried Yffim Beg, seizing the bridle of Hassan Pasha's horse. "Fly and save thyself! The best of thy army has perished, the Janissaries have fallen, the Moldavian army hath fled. Ismail Pasha's head has been hoisted on to a pike!"
"Impossible!" roared Hassan, beside himself, "come with me; let us charge, the victory is ours."
But his generals seized him, and tearing his sword from his hand, seized the bridle of his horse on both sides and hurried him along with them towards the bridge, which was now full of fugitives.
The hazard of the die had changed. The pursuers had become the fugitives. An hour before the Christian camp ran the risk of annihilation; it was now the turn of the Turks.
Kiuprile seeing the catastrophe, destroyed his bridges and remained on the opposite bank.
Meanwhile on the wings, Kucsuk Pasha and Feriz Beg, with his brigade of Amazons, were valiantly holding their own against the cuirassiers of Toggendorf and the hussars of Petneházy, till at last the melancholy notes of the bugle-horns gave the signal for retreat, and the combatants gradually separated. Only a few scattered bands, and presently, only a few scattered individuals, still fought together, and then they also wearily abandoned the contest and returned silently to their respective camps. Both sides felt that their strength was exhausted. The Christian host had four thousand, the Turkish sixteen thousand slain, and among them its best generals; they also lost all their heavy cannons, their banners, and their military renown; but none lost so much as Feriz Beg. The Amazon Brigade had perished. By its deliberate self-sacrifice it had saved the Turkish army from utter destruction.